I once got pulled into an arbitration hearing to explain how certain code functions operated. While not necessarily unethical it was a moral moment because I knew the inquiry came with the loaded intent to twist whatever explanation I gave into the worst possible extreme.
Sure enough that's exactly what happened and a really hard working and honest developer lost their job so an executive could save face.
Left that company a month later but I still feel horrible
Without giving away more details than you feel comfortable with, could you share more about what the developer was fired for and how it made that executive safe face?
It was a feature set that was supposed to provide additional reporting views and expose data to customers when queried. Turns out one exec had some very embarrassing transactions that emerged from this and he wanted that info suppressed and the person who leaked it fired.
The feature worked as designed, and this exec was the one who pushed for it to go to market despite all warnings that a review of the depth of exposed data was needed first. Nothing was ever leaked, as I mentioned it worked exactly as we were instructed to build by the product managers and our engineering lead.
The outcome is the outcome scoped for.
Fwiw many engineers left after that moment. We were already at odds with leadership and when they showed their colors in that incident it resulted in nearly the entire engineering department bailing.
This never made it publicly, it was an internal product demo to the whole company leading up to launch. To my knowledge no customers or media outlet caught wind of the transactions or the internal coup that resulted.
Are we talking personal transactions on behalf of the exec that happened to be in scope because they were also a user of the software/in the data set?
Or are we talking about business transactions by this exec that were professionally embarrassing?
Sure enough that's exactly what happened and a really hard working and honest developer lost their job so an executive could save face.
Left that company a month later but I still feel horrible